http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THIS past week, as the rocks of Arab rioters rained down on the heads of
Jewish worshippers observing Tisha B'Av at the Western Wall, the conflict in
the Middle East appeared to have come full-circle. Just as the latest round
of Palestinian attacks on Israel began with the lie that then Likud Party
leader Ariel Sharon desecrated the mosques on the Temple Mount, so, too, did
major media outlets claim that the violence was the fault of the Jews.

Once again, Jews were victimized, but the press concentrated on the efforts
of Israeli police to prevent the Arabs from further desecrating the sacred
site.

But Israel's problems in the sphere of information are greater than just the
latest instance of unbalanced reporting. Israel's critics in this country
have a bigger goal: changing the public perception that the Palestinians and
their leader are responsible for dashing hopes of peace last year. To
accomplish this, they must do more than send out a few misleading headlines -
they must change history.

A bald-faced effort to do just that appeared recently in The New York Times.
The paper launched a campaign on both its news and opinion pages to convince
Americans that Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat didn't reject peace
last year at Camp David, and that it was a "myth" that he, and not Israel's
supposed intransigence, was to blame for the year of violence that followed
Arafat's fateful decision.

Flying in the face of the historical record, America's leading newspaper
trumpeted on its July 26 front page the headline: "Many Now Agree That All
the Parties, Not Just Arafat, Were to Blame."

Much like the revisionist books that seek to place the blame for the failure
of the invading Arab powers to make peace with Israel in 1948 on the Jewish
victims of the Arab assault, this new piece of writing is merely politics
masquerading as history.

The danger this article and others like it that are published in The Times
and elsewhere is not just that Israel isn't getting fair treatment. It's that
a concerted effort is being made by some of the makers of opinion and of
policy in this country to undermine Israel's negotiating position and its
standing in the world.

Echoed by such diverse persons as former President Jimmy Carter, former
Clinton administration staffers, the European community and the old guard of
Arabists within the State Department, this offensive against Israel is just
beginning.

The point of Deborah Sontag's tendentious and lengthy article that appeared
on the 26th - which the Times' editors did not even have the decency to label
as analysis, let alone as opinion - was clear: to spin Arafat's rejection of
then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's unprecedented proposals for peace
into a story in which there were no villains. The objective of this
journalistic assault appears to be to reverse the clear pro-Israel tilt that
has characterized American policy since the Camp David summit.

The Times account holds that the fact that Arafat had refused to take
advantage of Barak's willingness to cede much of Israel's capital, Jerusalem,
and hand the Palestinians nearly all of the disputed territories of Judea and
Samaria was meaningless. Nor, according to the newspaper's diplomatic sources
in the United States and Europe, was the fact that the region had collapsed
into violence in the aftermath of the negotiations on Arafat's orders
particularly interesting.

According to Sontag, Barak's proposals did not represent an offer of the
"moon," but were merely an inadequate first move toward satisfying legitimate
Arab ambitions. Likewise, former influential Clinton staffer Robert Malley
wrote in both the Times and The New York Review of Books that Barak had only
made a step in the direction of justice. Both writers act as if the most
irrational Palestinian demands are reasonable, while the most minimal of
Israel's requirements are extremist and must be discarded.

Barak was prepared to compromise Israel's security concerns in the ter
ritories and to give up settlements, as well as much of Jerusalem, including
control of the Temple Mount. He offered more than any Israeli leader had ever
dreamed of giving away, violating the national consensus on Jerusalem and the
territories. But Arafat was unwilling to do anything other than to pocket
these concessions before asking for more, such as the so-called "right of
return" for Palestinian refugees, a move that would be synonymous with
Israel's destruction.

Following this, Arafat decided to launch a campaign of violence, including
standard terrorism, as well as low-intensity warfare, including the shelling
of Israeli cities, towns and villages by Palestinian "police" and allied
terrorists. In the face of these facts, only the most biased of onlookers can
avoid the truth that Arafat is uninterested in peace. The unceasing toll of
attacks on Israelis since then shows that the goal of eradicating Israel
remains the animating force of Palestinian nationalism and its leadership.

Of course, even the most straightforward of historical episodes is replete
with complex characters and storylines. There is no doubt that Barak's
handling of the negotiations was as maladroit as his concessions were rash.
And the ambition of President Clinton for a Nobel Peace Prize led him into
foolish decisions, as well as questionable diplomatic tactics.

But none of this changes the fact that Israel opted for peace, while the
Palestinians chose bloodshed. The only way to justify the conclusions of the
revisionists is to see Israel's self-defense, in addition to its historic,

legal and moral rights to Jerusalem, as either illegitimate or no more valid
than the Palestinian narrative that denies the existence of Jewish history.
Yet for those whose only goal is to promote unilateral Israeli concessions -
as opposed to genuine peace - Palestinian rejectionism and terror are
inconvenient facts that must be ignored or rationalized.

Having grown so used to a rhetoric of peace that promotes reconciliation at
the expense of truth, too many friends of Israel here are ready to
internalize unfair criticism of the state and accept the idea that one side
is no more to blame for the bloodshed than another.

What is left of the so-called "peace camp" in Israel and their allies abroad
are so desperate to revive the failed Oslo process that they are willing to
ignore the facts and concoct a new narrative in which their delusional faith
in Arafat can be justified.

And Israel's critics want to change the subject from a discussion of Arafat's
duplicity and bloody terrorism to one about how much pressure should be
placed upon Israel.